The UK startup scene is booming, but only one-third of UK entrepreneurs are women. Women have long faced built-in barriers to running their own companies: gender biases have historically painted entrepreneurship as patriarchal, and, as the pandemic showed, society still expects women to assume the bulk of care responsibilities. Without access to an equal number of entrepreneurial tools, resources and networks, women-led businesses ultimately contribute to the economy an average of 44% as much as male-led businesses, and their companies are five times less likely to scale up to £1 million turnover – a gender gap equivalent to 1.1 million missing businesses and billions more in lost revenue.

This programme, at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, a leader in innovation and entrepreneurship, is an opportunity for women entrepreneurs to learn the skills and strategies for winning early-stage investments and setting their business on a path to success. A third of women say that securing funding is their biggest challenge – no surprise given that only 1% of all venture funding goes to businesses founded by all-women teams. In this programme, you’ll learn to identify funding avenues, craft investor pitches and develop negotiation tactics, so that you can build and grow your business, and lead it wherever you want.

Is This Programme Right for You?

This programme is for entrepreneurs – founders, owners, CEOs, COOs – who want to learn how to grow and fund their business while networking with other women leaders. Corporate innovators, like directors and strategists, who want to develop knowledge of the ways to build successful growth strategies while networking with other women business leaders also stand to gain from the programme.